Victor Davis Hanson: Anyone Who Claims To Be Progressive Gets A Blank Check To Be Racist
Posted By Ian Schwartz
On Date January 17, 2019
Conservative columnist Victor Davis Hanson opined on T.V. hosts accusing President Trump of racism on Wednesday's broadcast of 'Tucker Carlson Tonight.' Hanson said anyone who claims to be progressive and not racist gets a blank check on racism. He said the idea that Democrats couldn't possibly be guilty of racism is "dangerous" and a "window" into the soul of progressives.
TUCKER CARLSON: Well if you've watched TV this week, you have heard this week's talking point. Republicans and the people who vote for them are bigots, every one of them. The geniuses over at The View, the daytime TV show, suggested that almost half the country's just flat-out immoral, and should be shunned on those grounds. Watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SUNNY HOSTIN, THE VIEW CO- HOST, ABC: But will Republicans now step up to the plate with Donald Trump because he has been using, I think, the Border wall as sort of this dog whistle for racism. The government is still shut down, and I think it's all about, "Let's not let all these Brown people in."
ABIGAIL HAIGHT HUNTSMAN, THE VIEW CO-HOST, ABC: There's 42 percent of this country that support the wall. Are they all racist?
HOSTIN: That's a good question.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I don't know. That's--
HOSTIN: That - that--
HUNTSMAN: I'm - I'm asking you that. I don't - I don't think so.
HOSTIN: --that's a good question.
HUNTSMAN: I don't think so. I think there are a lot of people that believe- -
HOSTIN: Is Donald - is - is-- I don't know--
HUNTSMAN: --in security.
HOSTIN: --is Donald Trump racist?
(CROWD APPLAUDING)
JOY BEHAR, THE VIEW CO-HOST, ABC: Duh.
MEGHAN MARGUERITE MCCAIN, THE VIEW CO-HOST: Do you think 42 percent of Americans are racist?
HOSTIN: I just said I don't know.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Yes. It's The View. You can write it off like what do they know. But it wasn't just The View. Nicole Wallace had a real job at one point. She was White House Communications Director briefly, I think, under last Republican Administration. Here's her view.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
NICOLLE WALLACE, CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST FOR MSNBC AND NBC NEWS: This does not have a parallel on the Left. They're just - they're just - it - it doesn't. There isn't. There isn't a strain of racism on the Left.
I don't so - so, I think that - that this gets brushed under the rug. People sort of tolerate - it's been normalized. Like you just said, they don't have anywhere else to go, so they attach to the Republican Party.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Yes. No racists on the Left, literally not one, says Nicole Wallace.
Over in ESPN, one of their hosts suggested it was racist, not surprisingly, for the President to serve the Clemson Football Team fast food at the White House. Fast food is the food of bigots. Of course.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MOLLY QERIM ROSE, MODERATOR, ESPN'S FIRST TAKE: When I saw him giving the football players, it's - it's a predominantly Black sport, and fast food, my thought went - went a very different place. Also a - a bunch of--
MAX KELLERMAN, CO-HOST OF ESPN'S FIRST TAKE: I think the - I think the President likes fast food.
ROSE: --a bunch of--
STEPHEN ANTHONY SMITH, ESPN FIRST TAKE COMMENTATOR: Yes.
ROSE: --Macs (ph). I mean come on.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Yes. OK. So, the consensus is the racism is on the Right. Only Conservatives can be racist. So that raises a few questions.
What exactly is racism? What does it look like? How'd if - you know if you are racist. And so, we have a handily checklist for you. Get a pen and follow along. See if you can answer these questions.
A racist - what would a racist do? A racist would support treating people differently based purely on their skin color. They'd hand out jobs and contracts and college admissions letters based on your DNA, rather than anything that you had done.
They'd also say that some people's opinions don't matter because of their skin color. That would be a racist statement. Wouldn't it? They would ridicule people regularly on the basis of their skin color. Racism? Yes.
They would also believe in race-based retribution most ominously. That means people of one race paying the price today for actions decades or centuries ago by people they may not have any relationship to at all, other than a similar appearance. What would that be? Well that would be the definition of racism, right?
People like this might even cancel activist marches if too many people of the wrong color showed up. What is that if not racism? They might also write op-eds saying they don't want their own children to be friends with people of another race. They might say a friendship like that would be impossible. That's what they would do.
Does that sound like what Republicans are doing? I don't know. We'll let you decide.
Victor Davis Hanson is a Fellow at the Hoover Institution, and he joins us tonight.
You know what I noticed, Professor Hanson, and maybe I'm just making this up in my head, but it seems like people have a tendency to accuse others of doing the exact thing that they are doing. Have you noticed that?
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON, HOOVER INSTITUTION SENIOR FELLOW: Yes. I think it's really dangerous throughout history when you have a group that sets themselves up as the arbiters of morality.
We saw that with the Catholic Church and the abuse problems. We saw that in the #MeToo and the Hollywood liberals like Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey.
They feel that they're not subject to the same standards they demand of others. And what's going on here is that if I think that Representative King confused Western civilization with White and - Whiteness, and they're not synonymous, especially in the global world.
Japan can be more Western than - than Russia. But the point is--
CARLSON: But it's just interesting that if you--
HANSON: --we got to find out what the rules are, Tucker because while--
CARLSON: Well that's what I mean--
HANSON: --we're condemning him, we have Hank Johnson, another Member of the Congress, who recently said, compared Jews in Israel to termites.
And then we've got the Editor Board - a person on the Editorial Board in the New York Times, Sarah Jeong, who said, literally, I hate White people, and compared them to dogs urinating on hydrants. The New York Times was not upset.
Then we've got this whole trope now in - in rap music, all the major marquee rappers, Ice Cube, Jay-Z, Scarface, it's just rampant anti- Semitism. And we saw LeBron James, our national icon, re-tweeting an anti- Semitic tweet and with no - of a rapper with no consequences.
So, the American people are saying to themselves, "Wow! What are the rules?" And when you look at Trump supporters are not just derided as stupid or ignorant. But if you'd - this new Left-wing mode is to say that they stink. We saw that with Peter Strzok.
I think Mr. Caputo from Politico said remember that they don't have any teeth. That was echoed by Rick Wilson. He call - also called them garbage people, a piece of S-H blank, an FBI agent remarked.
And so, there's this, Jim Carrey, of all, the actor, compared Trump supporters to apes that has a long - that simian synonym and metaphor has a really bad pedigree.
So, I guess what I'm saying is that anytime somebody says we're progressive, and we're enlightened, and we're not racist, that tends human nature of being what it is to give them a blank check to - to be racist, which is your point.
Remember 2008, Tucker, when Joe Biden said, do you remember that he said about Barack Obama that he was the first Black candidate who was clean, clean and was articulate. And then Harry Reid sort of echoed that and said, he didn't have a Negro dialect and he was light-skinned.
And then, Bill Clinton said, well he would have been serving his coffee. Even - even Al Sharpton tried to contextualize that because the idea, again, was these are good--
CARLSON: Right.
HANSON: --Progressives. They're good people. They couldn't be--
CARLSON: It's awful.
HANSON: --guilty of racism.
CARLSON: Right.
HANSON: That's not a window into their soul. It is with Republicans. But with Democrats and Progressives and Left is they're just inadvertent or it's allowed (ph).
CARLSON: Well, these are just tools they use--
HANSON: It's very dangerous to do that.
Poster Comment:
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